“Kyoto for Canada is in the past. As such, we are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw.”

PETER KENT, Canada’s environment minister, announcing the country’s formal withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Canada—unlike the U.S.—signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which required the country to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 6% below 1990 levels by 2012. But successive Canadian governments did little to cut emissions as the oil and gas industry exploded, and today Canada’s emissions are far above that target. Kent said that the government was formally withdrawing form Kyoto—the first country to do so—in order to avoid billions in penalties for failing to meet its targets.